salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb.

Christianity is merely a system for turning priestesses into handmaidens, queens into concubines, and goddesses into muses.

A sense of humor...is superior to any religion so far devised.

Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide.

The word desire suggests that there is something we do not have. If we have everything already, then there can be no desire, for there is nothing left to want. I think that what the Buddha may have been trying to tell us is that we have it all, each of us, all the time; therefore, desire is simply unnecessary.

Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to institutionalization. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished.